Yellowstone

We packed and packed and packed. To save space (?) we brought blankets and left the sleeping bags at home....Ronnie's idea. The camera, snacks and cooler went on the back seat with everything else in the back.

It was great. Me and Ronnie left after work. I got off at 130 and he had to stay till 3 so I tried to get his keys from him so I could change and move the Jeep to the pier so we could just leave. For some reason, he was not having it. Of course it pissed me off because it is a vehicle and he was being a jerk. Anyway I got the keys (to the surprise of many of his co-workers).

I picked up the Jeep, changed, and went to the pier.....and waited...and waited. Once he got off we dropped a friend off at the airport and then DROVE and DROVE and DROVE.

We stopped and we slept.

The next morning we drove some more. We stopped for gas right out side of the North entrance. Once we got in the park....I found out that we had to drive even more!
The first place we stopped had elk just walking around like it was cool! I have never seen anything like it. Then it started raining. We drove around looking at this and looking at that. It was all so nice. You could see where the big fire was that destroyed everything was and all the streams and rivers. We saw several waterfalls and bison out roaming around. We did a little shopping and decided to find a place to camp because it was early afternoon and we wanted to get settled for the evening.

We pulled into a camp site and as Ronnie was getting us registered we saw a bison walking right through the site. He was like 20 feet away from me and so HUGE. It was interesting. So, we set up camp and Ronnie built a fire. We decided to eat supper and then ride around to see if any of the animals were out eating around sunset. As soon as we pulled out of the camp site it started raining....hard! Shopping we went. By the time we got back to the camp it had stopped raining but EVERYTHING was wet outside of the tent. Ronnie managed to build another fire and I went to bed. About 1 am I wake up shivering. I have slightly adjusted to the cold in Washington but we were camping in the mountains by a lake..... Ronnie woke up too! (Wonder how that happened!) He was also cold...(guess we should have brought those sleeping bags). We somehow managed to make it back to sleep for about 4 and a half hours then I had to get up. I tiptoed to the bath room and used the hand dryer to defrost my jeans and sweater! Ronnie forgot that the temperatures in Yellowstone fluctuate GREATLY from day to night year round!

More waterfalls and animals playing in the trees were viewed as we made our way to the west side of the park and then we found Old Faithful who ended up not being quite so faithful!

I decided I wanted to shop and so that is what we did. I looked at Ronnie and had one of my not so bright moments and said, "We can check out and go wait for the 830 show". The guy ringing me up was so kind to inform me that it was already 835. We put our newly purchased items in the infamous Jeep and begin to walk around to the other geysers in the area. At this point I got particularly upset because they were surrounded by pools of water that were normally gorgeous blues, and greens, and yellows, and oranges. On this particular day they were all muddy water brown (or gray if I was lucky)! As we walked around the back side I noticed that the fog was beginning to clear and view was wonderful. I fought with Ronnie at a couple of choice locations to set up the tripod and let me take a picture of us together. Once we were about 500 yards from the viewing deck of Old Faithful I happened to look up and she was erupting. 20 MINUTES EARLY!!!!!!! I threw my hand (with the tripod in it) towards Ronnie and begin to snap pictures. I ALMOST MISSED IT. I didn't and I have some cool pictures, but if you go.....stay and wait.....it is an estimated 92 minutes between shows and it was beautiful.

This ended the stay in Yellowstone. We were off to Utah!